Gold Rush

I haven’t seen many Chaplain films, but this was more enjoyable than City Lights. The physical comedy is great, and it’s fun to see references to it in present day movies; the gag with pretending to be asleep with the shoes on the hands featured prominently in the Hindi film Chennai Express. The storytelling is a bit loose—most of it feels like scenes to move from one situational gag to the next with the plot as at artifice bolted on top, but it doesn’t quite feel natural.

Blade Runner

This movie has moments of pure brilliance, but the majority is rather mundane. The writing is terrible, but the mis-en-scene and art direction is amazing. Harrison Ford is meh in playing another burnt out loner. Rutger Hauer is amazing as the sometimes maniacal, sometimes heroic Replicant Roy Batty. The dialogues literally feel as though they were written by high schoolers who are trying to move the exposition forward in the most obvious way possible. Likewise, the scenes in J. F. Seabastin’s apartment are awkwardly executed, as are parts of the final fight scenes, but the final monologue from Hauer is simply brilliant.

The Best Years of Our Lives

A bit of a feel good patriotic cry fest, but it was made in 1946 so it’s a bit forgivable. Ironically the most convincing actor was the non-professional Harold Russell as Homer Parrish. For the life of me, I can’t understand why Myrna Loy stays with her husband when he is basically a drunk who is feeling sorry for himself. The movie is a bit overlong, but the idea to focus on veterans from each of the branches of the military was droll.

In the Heat of the Night

Some of the characters are a bit clichéd, like the crazy deli counter boy, provocative white teenage girl, and bigoted small town sheriff, but overall the story is compelling. Poitier’s simmering, yet restrained anger is a master class is acting. I did notice a lot of Coca-cola adverts which makes me thing even in the 60s product placement was alive and well. Given Poitier had won in 1963, it is understandable he wasn’t given the Academy Award for Best Actor, but he definitely outshone Rod Steiger who did win. As a note it was a particularly strong field with nominations for Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde, Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, and Spencer Tracy in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. It is also a particularly salient movie given this happened in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement.